IRS Reduces Claim Backlog By Two-Thirds; Recommends Electronic Filing To Avoid Future Delays
According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) National Taxpayer Advocate, the massive backlog of unprocessed tax returns has been reduced by two thirds over the past year.
This is good news for the marketers who waited up to a year or more for their IRS 8849 refund claims and biodiesel blenders credit payments worth tens of millions of dollars.
The IRS started the 2022 tax season with a backlog of 11.5 million individual and business returns from previous years.
The processing backlog has been reduced to four million returns by the end of 2022, all of which are paper returns.
The backlog grew due to pandemic workplace restrictions, dozens of new tax credits passed by Congress to offset COVID related losses by small businesses and outdated technology that requires all paper claims to be processed manually.
The IRS must pay interest on unprocessed paper returns after 45 days of receipt. Returns filed electronically did not suffer a significant delay during 2022, according to the IRS and were processed within the 20-day window after which the IRS must pay interest.
Marketers are strongly urged to eliminate the use of paper returns in favor of filing claims electronically to avoid processing delays.
